I really caught the travel bug this summer. I spent two weeks in England with an art history study abroad group and shortly after I returned home I spent almost a week driving through the Southwest to visit the Grand Canyon. Long periods of travel – especially so close together – are not very me, so I was certain I would be homesick. Little did I know, both England and the American Southwest had glimpses that reminded me of home – all in the form of art.
I left for England just two short weeks after the unveiling of Joslyn’s reattributed Rembrandt. The place that reminded me the most of home while I was there was London’s National Gallery, where I walked by entire walls filled with Rembrandts. And, at the time, the special exhibition was a massive, multi-room Veronese exhibit – a name Joslyn visitors should definitely recognize! Despite being thousands of miles away, I felt like I was very much at home in this museum.
I had planned a road trip to the Grand Canyon a few months before I started working at Joslyn, so at the time I was not aware of this summer’s exhibition schedule. It wasn’t until after my fiancé and I had made several stops at beautiful viewpoints and were browsing the gift shop for postcards that we started seeing his name. Thomas Moran! We instantly had an “ah ha!” moment, and the rest of our stay near the canyon turned into a game of “Where’s Moran?” (Here’s a hint: everywhere.) We found postcards, folios, as well as several books by scholar Joni L. Kinsey (who will be visiting Joslyn on August 23rd). We even found over-sized black and white photographs of the artist himself throughout our hotel, but my favorite was the one that was in our room. It was the artist and his daughters, sitting near the edge of the canyon while Moran sketched.
I went into my summer travels expecting to learn a lot about art. What I wasn’t expecting to learn was this: England and the American Southwest feel surprisingly like home.
Candace Berger, Marketing Assistant